"Flu season is pretty much over," said David Engelthaler, Arizona's state epidemiologist.

Flu was widespread in only five states -- Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, New York and Rhode Island -- the week of April 9-15, the most recent data available.

In Washington state, the flu season was unremarkable.

"It's just a regular, run-of-the-mill" season, said Phyllis Shoemaker, an epidemiologist who runs the state's flu surveillance program.

There were two peaks in activity in Washington, with college students and middle-age people hit the hardest in December and schoolchildren suffering in February and March.

The long-lasting season started in December with a rush of cases in the Southwest that swamped hospital emergency rooms. It then rotated to other regions, with widespread activity in some areas as late as this month.

One indicator is the nasal and throat specimens taken from patients with flulike symptoms by physicians who are part of a national flu surveillance network.

Between the beginning of October and April 15, 13 percent of specimens tested positive for flu. For about the same period a year ago, it was 16 percent and in 2003-04, 20 percent.

Another indicator is deaths. The severe 2003-04 season started in terrible fashion, with flu-related deaths of 93 children between that October and early January. Overall, deaths from pneumonia and flu were considered epidemic for nine consecutive weeks that winter.